These are the archives for the week ending 25th January 2008
Cost of wars goes up and up
The Iraq war may not dominate U.S. news reports as the carnage drops, but a new report underscores the financial burden of persistent combat that is helping run up the government's credit card.
"Funding for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other activities in the war on terrorism expanded significantly in 2007," the Congressional Budget Office said in a report released on Wednesday.
War funding, which averaged about $93 billion a year from 2003 through 2005, rose to $120 billion in 2006 and $171 billion in 2007 and President George W. Bush has asked for $193 billion in 2008, the nonpartisan office wrote.
Reuters, 23/1/08
Rice: ideals make americans impatient
An American secretary of state has several choices when addressing a glittering international forum: to sound a rallying cry for a renewed fight against terrorism, to soothe nervous investors with a detailed plan for the global economy, or to zero in on one trouble spot in an effort to build support for a focused plan.
Condoleezza Rice took a different tack Wednesday in her first major address in person to the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. She painted an optimistic picture of American leadership based on ideals--the ideals that were the foundation of the new country more than two centuries ago.
Rice used her speech to promote the values of what she called "American realism," a foreign policy based on the principles of open markets, democratic capitalism, the rule of law and human rights. It was an inclusive speech that outlined a world in which the U.S. pursues the "triumph of its ideals" in developing free-market democracies.
"Ideals and optimism makes Americans impatient," she said.
Forbes, 23/1/08
Afghan 'blasphemy' death sentence
An Afghan journalist has been sentenced to death by a provincial court for distributing "blasphemous" material. Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, was arrested in 2007 after downloading material from the internet relating to the role of women in Islamic societies.
A primary court in Balkh province said that Kambakhsh had confessed to blasphemy and had to be punished. The court also threatened to arrest any reporters who protested against Kambakhsh's sentence.
BBC News, 23/1/08
Afghan drug eradication policy spectacularly unsuccessful
"I'm a spray man myself," President Bush told government leaders and American counter-narcotics officials during his 2006 trip to Afghanistan. Bush meant, of course, that he favors aerial eradication of poppy fields in Afghanistan, which supplies over 90 percent of the world's heroin. His remarks are part of the story behind the spectacularly unsuccessful U.S. counter-narcotics program in Afghanistan.
Karzai and much of the international community in Kabul have warned Bush that aerial spraying would create a backlash against the government and the Americans, and serve as a recruitment device for the Taliban while doing nothing to reduce the drug trade. This is no side issue: If the program continues to fail, success in Afghanistan will be impossible.
Fortunately, Bush has not been able to convince other nations or Karzai that aerial spraying should be conducted. But even without aerial eradication, the program, which costs around $1 billion a year, may be the single most ineffective program in the history of American foreign policy. It's not just a waste of money. It actually strengthens the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as criminal elements within Afghanistan.
The program destroys crops in insecure areas, especially in the south, where the Taliban is strongest. This policy pushes farmers with no other source of livelihood into the arms of the Taliban without reducing the total amount of opium being produced. Meanwhile, there is far too little effort made against the drug lords and high-ranking government officials who are at the heart of the huge drug trade in Afghanistan whose dollar value equals about 50 percent of the country's official gross domestic product.
Washington Post, 23/1/08
Iraq budget stalls
Iraqi lawmakers have refused to pass the 2008 budget because of rows over allocations, including how much money to give the autonomous Kurdistan region, in the latest sign of the country's deep political divisions.
Parliamentary speaker Mahmoud Mashhadani called the heads of Iraq's main political blocs to a meeting in his office late on Monday after lawmakers failed to sign off on the budget in recent days, his office said on Tuesday.
Failure to pass the $48 billion budget could hold up vital spending at a time when Washington is urging the government to jumpstart the economy to take advantage of falls in violence.
Reuters, 22/1/08
Pre-emptive nuclear strike must be option, NATO told
The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the "imminent" spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west's most senior military officers and strategists.
Calling for root-and-branch reform of Nato and a new pact drawing the US, Nato and the European Union together in a "grand strategy" to tackle the challenges of an increasingly brutal world, the former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands insist that a "first strike" nuclear option remains an "indispensable instrument" since there is "simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world".
The manifesto has been written following discussions with active commanders and policymakers, many of whom are unable or unwilling to publicly air their views. It has been presented to the Pentagon in Washington and to Nato's secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, over the past 10 days. The proposals are likely to be discussed at a Nato summit in Bucharest in April.
Guardian, 22/1/08
Canada removes US and Israel from torture list
The Canadian government now says Guantanamo Bay, the United States and Israel were mistakenly included as sites of possible torture in a government manual that was inadvertently disclosed last week.
Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier said yesterday he has ordered the manual be rewritten and assured the U.S. and Israel the document did not reflect the government's position.
"I regret the embarrassment caused by the public disclosure of the manual used in the department's torture awareness training. It contains a list that wrongly includes some of our closest allies," Bernier said in a written statement.
Toronto Star, 21/1/08
US backs Turkey's nuclear plans...
The US has expressed support for Turkey's plans to develop nuclear energy and encouraged Ankara to become a member in an international partnership facilitating the worldwide expansion of nuclear energy in a safe manner, US officials said.
Turkey is preparing to issue a public tender for the construction of its first nuclear power plant and plans to build at least two nuclear reactors by 2015. The US is reportedly interested in cooperation in the development of a Turkish nuclear power industry.
Zaman, Turkey, 21/1/08
...as Israel launches spy satellite
Israel launched an advanced spy satellite Monday that will be able to track events in Iran, the country it considers its top foe, even at night and in cloudy weather, defense officials said.
The TECSAR satellite is of particular importance for Israel because it can be used to keep tabs on Iran's nuclear program, which the U.S. and Israel fear is a cover for pursuing nuclear weapons, they said.
Israel has backed U.S. efforts to get the international community to intensify sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear program. Iran insists its program is for power generation.
Associated Press, 21/1/08
Afghan war is only just beginning
According to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, which advises aid groups on security in the country, Nato and the Taleban are about to enter a "broad and deep" conflict.
"In simple terms, the consensus amongst informed individuals at the end of 2007 seems to be that Afghanistan is at the beginning of a war, not the end of one," the group said in a report looking ahead at 2008.
For the Taleban the strategy is clear. Spread the insurgency, undermine the reconstruction efforts, drive a wedge between foreign forces and the local population and isolate the beleaguered Government of President Karzai.
The movement is assisted by the chaos in neighbouring Pakistan. Men, arms and funds can more easily slip across the border, and its al-Qaeda allies, at large in the lawless tribal territories, are freer than at any time since 2001 to plan and execute operations across the border in Afghanistan.
The Times, 21/8/07
Britain as inept as US in postwar planning
The government's top foreign policy advisers were as inept as their US counterparts in failing to see that removing Saddam Hussein in 2003 was likely to lead to a nationalist insurgency by Sunnis and Shias and an Islamist government in Baghdad, run by allies of Iran.
None of Whitehall's "Arabists" warned Tony Blair of the difficulties which have plagued the occupation. The revelation undermines the British claim that it was US myopia which was to blame for the failure to foresee what would happen in postwar Iraq.
Officials alone cannot be blamed. Ministers failed to ask serious questions. Blair never called on the experts for detailed analysis of the consequences of an invasion, officials say. He saw the war as Iraq's liberation and felt any postwar problems would pale in the face of Iraqi delight.
Guardian, 21/8/07
Increased airstrikes threaten civilians
One day last week, forces from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division spotted a set of bunkers south of Baghdad identified as training sites for al-Qaida recruits. No firefight followed. No American troops were killed. Instead, the bunkers were destroyed by 34,000 pounds of satellite-guided bombs dropped from a B-1 Lancer flying high overhead.
Behind the hotly debated troop surge of the last year has been a far more dramatic increase in the use of air strikes in Iraq. Bombs were dropped in 1,206 separate missions last year, five times as many as the year before. In 2007, there were more air strikes in Iraq than during the previous three years combined.
The bombing escalation has raised concerns of increased civilian casualties and that such deaths could undermine the effort to win the hearts and minds of Iraqi citizens.
The Air Force seeks to minimize the risk of civilian deaths by alerting civilians in advance of strikes and fine-tuning the size of the bombs used to destroy a target. Still, the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq and other human rights groups have expressed fear at the risk to civilians from U.S. military operations.
Kansas City Star, 19/1/08
US sends injured soldiers to war zone
Seventy-nine injured soldiers were pressed into war duty last month as the U.S. Army struggled to fill its ranks, but most were assigned to light-duty jobs within limits set by doctors, two Army leaders said.
The Denver Post, quoting internal Army e-mails and a Fort Carson soldier, reported that troops had been deployed to Kuwait en route to Iraq while they were still receiving medical treatment for various conditions.
Fort Carson's top general Maj. Gen. Mark Graham said most of the 79 soldiers remain in Iraq, while about a dozen are in Kuwait, the newspaper reported in Friday editions. A few returned to the United States because of inadequate rehabilitation available in theater, Graham said.
Congressional investigators are reviewing allegations that medically unfit soldiers have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan to shore up lagging troop numbers.
"My personal opinion is, is that as the war goes on, you'll see more and more soldiers with (limitations)," Graham said.
International Herald Tribune, 19/1/08
Discontent surges in Iraq
In the depths of a strangely cold winter in the Middle East, Iraqis complain that the lights are not on, the kerosene heaters are without fuel and the water doesn't flow - and they blame the government.
"Where's the kerosene and the water?" asked Amjad Kazim, a 56-year-old Shiite who lives in eastern Baghdad. "We hear a lot of promises but we see nothing."
Little kerosene is available on the state-run market at the subsidized price of $0.52 a gallon. But the fuel can be found on the black market, where it goes for more than $3.79 a gallon.
An average household needs at least 1.32 gallons a day to stay warm, which translates into a monthly expense of $150, or half what an average Iraqi earns.
"I have had no electricity for a week, and I cannot afford to buy it from neighborhood generators," said Hamdiyah Subeih, a 42-year-old homemaker from Baghdad's Shiite Baladiyat district. "I would rather live in Saddam Hussein's hell than the paradise of these new leaders."
Even during the shortages of last summer's heat, most Iraqi's were counting on electricity for air conditioners, fans and refrigeration about half the day. Now it's off for days at a stretch in many areas and on only a few hours daily on average, residents say.
Associated Press, 20/1/08
Turkey bombs northern Iraq
Turkish warplanes destroyed about 60 Kurdish rebel positions in neighbouring Iraq in a bombing raid earlier this week, the military said Friday.
The targets in three regions along the Turkish border included two anti-aircraft posts, four ammunition depots as well as training and logistical bases.
Tuesday's raid was the fourth strike on PKK targets in northern Iraq that the Turkish army has confirmed since December 16, in addition to a ground cross-border operation to stop a group of rebels trying to infiltrate Turkey. At least 150 PKK militants have been killed in the air raids so far and more than 200 rebel positions destroyed, according to the army.
The raids are conducted with intelligence from the United States, which, like its NATO ally Turkey, lists the PKK as a terrorist group.
AFP, 18/1/08
Eighty dead in south Iraq
Members of an obscure messianic cult fought Iraqi security forces Friday in two southern cities, leaving at least 80 people dead and scores injured, while spreading panic among worshipers marking Shiite Islam's most important holiday.
The clashes, which erupted as Shiites marched, chanted and beat their chests in Basra and Nasiriya, represented the first major test for Iraqi security forces since Britain completed a transfer of responsibility for security in the region last month.
They also pointed to dangerous divisions within Iraq's majority Shiite population at a time when U.S. and Iraqi forces are claiming progress in curbing attacks by Sunni militants.
Los Angeles Times, 19/1/08
Iraqi army still dependent on US
Iraqi security forces now consist of nearly 500,000 personnel, after a 55 percent increase in the size of the Iraqi army over the past year, according to U.S. Army Lt. Gen. James Dubik, head of the Multi-National Security Transition Command in Iraq. The Iraqi government envisions increasing that number to 580,000 by the end of 2008, with an ultimate goal of building a force of as many as 640,000, he said.
Part of the rapid growth, however, has resulted not from additional recruits but because the Iraqi government has placed other existing security forces under the oversight of the ministries of defense and interior, Dubik said. In addition, the latest count is based on Iraqi government data rather than on U.S. military data.
Iraq "remains reliant on the coalition" for critical gear, such as helicopters, mortars, artillery and intelligence-gathering equipment, he said.
Moreover, Iraq's shortage of mid-grade leaders represents "a very real and very tangible hole in proficiency that . . . will affect them for at least a decade."
Rampant corruption and lingering sectarianism within the Iraqi security forces are also major hurdles that Iraqi defense and police leaders must overcome in order to take responsibility for Iraq's security, Dubik said.
Washington Post, 18/1/08